Bright Star (32 page)

“If you don’t want this,” Jackson interrupted Rush’s reverie as he sat at the kitchen table. “If you truly don’t want this world that has been created for you, then you know all you have to do is tell them to leave. All you have to do is tell them to stop killing themselves every day just to gain your notice, and they will do it. Rush, why won’t you do the small thing that could end this?”

“He can’t,” Monk answered for him as he entered the room. Rush rolled his eyes. “He can’t. If he tells us to leave, if he gives such a… a… lofty edict, then he has to accept his power.”

Rush was silent save for a ragged sigh of frustration. Jackson contemplated Monk’s words. Both of the brothers recognized the wisdom they held.

“Where is Bright Star?” Jackson asked.

Monk and Rush exchanged a glance, the meaning of which Jackson could not begin to guess. Jackson was surprised at the realization that he had not seen Bright Star for more than a month. Not since that day.

*

Bright Star sat in the chair next to the window in the dark room illuminated only by the light of the moon. She held four large, shiny silver coins in her hands. She tried to maintain the silent uninterrupted peace of the night but could not. She found she could not arrest the cough that started deep in her chest though she clamped her mouth shut and squeezed her arms in closer to her body to control it. When the attack subsided and she’d wiped hot tears from her bloodless cheek, she held her palm open, focusing on the glow of the coins. As she concentrated, the cicadas and the crickets came to life outside her window. She could hear all sorts of things crushing brittle leaves and twigs as they rushed through her woods. The lights flashed on, then off again. She couldn’t stop the spillover of energy no matter how hard she tried to focus. The crease in her brow sharpened and sweat beaded in the small of her back and at her temples. The tears slipped out again, even hotter.

The coins wobbled in her palm until they became precariously balanced on their sides. She sucked in her breath, ignoring the light’s incessant flicker. She sucked in her upper lip, catching it in her front teeth. The coins then started to roll against her skin, circling the upraised hand. Her brow relaxed only slightly as she watched the coins orbit her hand only lightly brushing her skin. And as she watched the quarters moved slower and made indentations in her flesh as they circled. Then they turned even slower as they bore even deeper into her skin, leaving redness in their wake. The coins made four identical trails of blood on her hand. Her hold on her lip tightened as she watched in horror as those same trails paled, then disappeared as if she had never been cut.

She barely noticed the door opening and a shadow quickly enveloping her room, even usurping the moonlight. The coins fell to the ground. Blood evaporated before it dripped from her raised hand and her lips. Vacant eyes found bright ones in the night.

“Everything I do is tainted with her. Everything. Look at my hand. She’s stalking me. Even when I am vulnerable, quiet, she is ruthless and stalks me.” Jackson blinked at her. “Jackson, don’t you see, I die when he is not with me. I die. She finds a way to be with him. She’s killing me.”

“Who?”

“Elizabeth,” she answered in a plaintive whisper.

And though he could feel Bright Star fading away, his heart finally found resolution, and though he had never met her, he wanted Elizabeth back. He wanted to see her, to touch her, to stop her from hurting Bright Star.

He came to her side and knelt down. He lifted her slight weight and laid her gently on the bed. Then he took her hand in his and pressed her palm to his lips. Lovingly, he bestowed kisses on each crimson path cutting her lifeline, her love line, and restored each one of them. Finally, he just held her hand in both of his and looked down at it. He raised his gaze to hers.

Her skin was tinged with yellow. Her bones pushed violently against her flesh, giving her the look of a thinly veiled skeleton. She was all teeth and brittle bone; a skull perched on caving shoulders. Jackson could not deny that death lie beside her in the bed stroking cold unto her brow. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop himself. He called for Rush as he always had.

Suddenly, he looked up. A sound. A sound that couldn’t convince him that it was a sound. Jackson knew it came from within him. And then again that sound. He felt the hand in his hand grow rigid and looked down at Bright Star. She had heard, too. The bones in her face squeezed to wrinkle the skin above her brows. She jerked on her bed and he realized that she was sliding off it. She crumpled on the floor in front of him like a discarded dress and wrapped her arms around her head as she rocked back and forth like timorous child.

The laughter in Rush’s voice startled Jackson. His eyes moved from the fragile Bright Star to locate the voice.

Rush was perched in the window. He was smiling and somehow his wide, strong mouth had stretched even wider as he bore his teeth in a horrific smile.

“Bright Star, you’re back,” Rush stated plainly.

“Understatement,” she replied with her brows drawn together. The bravado was undercut by the moisture in her stark blue eyes and the way she had slipped to floor.

Rush hopped off of the sill and to the ground. He neared the bed, brown eyes turned golden. He stopped at the rocking heap on the floor before him. Bright Star had not moved from the ground.

He reached out a hand to smooth Bright Star’s hair. Bright Star shrank back, still covering her eyes. Laughter bubbled up from deep within Rush, then erupted like a geyser. He laughed so hard he wrapped his arms around his waist and fell backwards on the ground. He kicked his feet and thrashed violently on the floor. Then, abruptly, he stopped laughing and rose. He stood soberly then let her body hang in the air before them. Closed, immobile, his mouth seemed all the more threatening.

“You understand now,” Bright Star said to him. “You are the savior.”

“Savior?” he questioned softly. “Savior?” He raised his hands from his sides and rose higher into the air. “I am no one’s savior.” Rush frowned. “I am no one.”

“Why do you fight it so much?” The question came in a broken voice. Bright Star’s blue gaze lit Rush’s face.

“I’m not fighting for anything more than the right to be left alone,” Rush told her.

“It’s not that simple, Rush, and you know it.” Her words, while strong, cracked with her wavering voice. “You can’t be left alone. You have a duty.”

“I don’t,” Rush snapped. He raked his hands over his face. “I don’t have a duty. I don’t have a responsibility.”

Bright Star opened her mouth to respond. She closed it again as she considered her next words carefully. “Rush, you have a gift. But this gift is not yours alone. It was given to the world through you.
You
were given to the world. Your power was not meant to be squandered or neglected. It was meant to be used and used for all of our benefits. Your gift surpasses any other’s ability. Your gift was meant to shift, change, sculpt, and remake the world. Your gift was meant to save the world. That is your destiny. No denial you make will ever change that. You will save the world and accepting that could save even more lives.”

“No, Bright Star,” Rush returned. “I will tell you what can save lives. Lives can be saved if you would just ask those people to stop hurting themselves and everyone around them. You can ask them to stop putting themselves in harm’s way. Lives can be saved if you just give up this precognitive conjecture. You have to save them. I won’t warn you again.”

Maternal Instinct

The pressure was going to kill him.

Jackson sat at his desk with his hands pressed over his eyes. They couldn’t go on this way. Not one more day. Not one more minute did he think he could live in that house perpetually being stalked by death. Each moment was a waiting game now to find out how many more Followers would move into their home. What new way would Bright Star use to demand Rush’s attention while Jackson hurt each time he saw her and the continual pain she faced. She hadn’t tried in months. But that couldn’t last.

The pressure was going to kill him.

That morning when he had decided to come back to the SHQ, he witnessed Dr. Randall Sandoval in the observatory talking quietly with the two attendants. He’d greeted them as always, but unlike any other time, he noticed the thin strips of yellow fabric tied around each of their wrists, including Sandoval’s. He’d seen it before. He couldn’t believe that he was seeing it then.

Followers.

He was speechless. He retreated. He had no answers.

Jackson thought of his mother. He thought of the tape that he had played so many times. That last one she had filmed just for him. For the first time, he considered the fact she had not made such a gesture for Rush. But then, she hadn’t had to, had she? Janie would have known that Rush would be able to keep her close to him in a much more significant way.

He thought about not pushing the button, but like every other time in his life when he had been lost, he pushed it anyway. He could feel the familiar tightening in his chest, the swelling at the back of his throat when he saw her. She was smiling, but she still looked sick as all hell. Janie Smothers-Rush. His mother, their mother.

Her curly brown hair hung limp and damp around her face. She swatted at it many times, but it still managed to affix itself to her cheeks and forehead.

The tape started in the middle. It always did. Their dad had been trying to tape something else and ended up clipping the first part. He’d been sorry. He’d apologized profusely. Janie and Jackson had forgiven him for it. “My miracle boy,” Janie said, smiling wide. “I didn’t know you were coming, didn’t even know I could have another child, but I was so happy when I found out about you. Of course, I worried about your father, how he was going to take it. And I worried about Jacob. But I wanted you desperately. I guess I knew that you were going to be special. Remember, there’s no surprising me,” she kidded. “Well, baby, when it was time for you to come, I was at home with Jacob and no one was answering the phone. Not your dad, not your aunt, not Grampa Ned. No one. So I had to dress your brother, buckle him up and drive us both to the hospital.

“Your brother was so quiet, so calm. It’s like he knew, too, that you were going to be special. He was just waiting for you patiently.” She paused to take a ragged breath and lie back against her pillows for a moment. Only a moment. Shortly after, she leaned forward again and continued, “When we got to the hospital, the nurses took Jacob away and left me into that awful white room where we were supposed to get ready for you.

“Jack, baby, I barely showed when I had you. You were a tiny, tiny, still thing inside me. I fretted for months and months because I thought something was wrong with you. The doctors wouldn’t tell me anything. I think they just saw my… my history, and figured that I couldn’t be trusted with any information. They didn’t even talk to me. They would only go outside with your Dad and whisper. Sometimes I tried to talk to him, but it made me so tired. But that isn’t important. He would always come back in and tell me there was nothing to worry about. I never pressed him. I didn’t believe anything could be wrong with my perfect boy.”

Jackson could feel the tears starting in his eyes. He was a grown man. He had seen this film so many times before. It wasn’t even the last of his mother’s video letters, but it was the one he watched every single day he came to work. Never at home because he just didn’t know how Rush would react if he ever saw him watching these films. Still, it was bringing tears to his eyes as if it had been the first time.

And in that instant, he thought of Bright Star. She and his mother were so alike and yet so different. They both were devoted to the men in their lives. Janie had been devoted to her miracle boy and so was Bright Star. Bright Star fought for what she believed in no matter what anyone had to say. Bright Star would fight for death, but Jackson knew she would fight for life just as hard.

Jackson wiped his eyes and continued to listen to his mother.

“When it was time for you to come, the doctors just kept shaking their heads. They kept saying you were not helping them. You didn’t want to come out. They thought you were going to die, baby. They thought you wouldn’t be strong enough. Can you believe that?” She grinned directly at him. “You of all babies. The strongest and most fearless little boy there ever was, and they thought you weren’t going to make it.